I shot my footage in HDV and captured it with setting the PROJECT TYPE to 1080i/59.94 HDV. I captured 8 minutes of video and I checked the size of the media file on the harddrive after and it was only 1.5GB. When you capture in HDV, shouldn't it take up more space? Did I not actually capture it in HDV then? I'm really want to get very good quality out of my project. Then, when I transcoded the 8 minutes of video to DNxHD 145,  the size of this on the harddrive was 8GB, which is 1GB per minute which I believe should be correct(?)  I thought the purpose of transcoding to DNxHD is because the captured HDV files are so huge. Is this not correct or do you think I do not have my settings correct in order to capture in HDV quality?

THANKS!!

HDV has the same data rate as standaard DV I think. So the files will be smaller than DNxHD. One of the  reasons to transcode to DNxHD is for ease of editing, you dont't have to deal with long GOP.

No HDV is small as in 25 mbps .. the trouble with HDV is it is long gop mpeg as in it has no individual frames. That will be noticed when editing. Also the raster size of HDV is smaller then 1980 (as in "normal HD"). The transcode to DNxHD will increase file size because in your case you went to DNxHD 145 as in 145mbps as opposite to the 25 of HDV.

Editing DNxHD will feel better then editing HDV as it does not has to encode the group of pictures everytime you do something.

Menno